James Mcclure - The Sunday Hangman

“We might look in on the exchange on our way through,” Kramer suggested.

“Can do, boss.”

“So tell me when we hit Brandspruit.”

“Okay.”

Zondi seemed about to add something. Kramer waited in case he did, then settled down comfortably, with his knees against the dashboard, to ruminate and even to doze a little. Very soon he was forcing his eyelids open for just long enough to see-and instantly forget-any onrushing obstacle. This was no more than a reflex response to a slight change in his center of gravity, caused by Zondi’s easing up momentarily on the throttle; the donkey carts, ox sledges, and wobbling cyclists were in themselves very dull. A farm truck appeared, heeling over against the sunset, dark and menacing, and gave them a long, angry blast on its horn, before scraping by with a broadside of loose stones.

“Jesus!” said Kramer, sitting bolt upright.

This amused Zondi.

But Kramer’s smile never made it. About nine kilometers from Witklip, on a road leading nowhere else he knew of, he’d just seen an enormous man with a beard at the wheel of a farm truck. And-in what had been like a remembered glimpse of a dream, so vivid it had made his loins leap-he had seen, on the far side of this man, a beautiful girl with honey hair and blue eyes and a mouth like a whore. She had laughed at him.

“Fluke!” muttered Strydom, putting down his favorite work, The Essentials of Forensic Medicine by Cyril John Poison, who was a barrister as well as a pathologist, and could be depended upon for a very dry wit.

“You’re not still moaning about what Trompie said,” grumbled his wife, Anneline, as she came in from watching the neighbors’ television set. “It was lovely, Chris; you really missed out. And do you remember The World at War you saw last week? Well, tonight Maria’s husband told us that those Nazi concentration camps were all faked by the Jews afterwards.”

“Rubbish,” said Strydom, who was still wrapped up in his own problems of conscience.

“I told him you’d say that, and he lent me this clipping from the Jo’burg Star . It’s a letter from a Mr. G. Rico, who states that the figures were grossly exaggerated. ‘Furthermore, any such casualties as did exist were not victims of any premeditated act.’ So what do you say now, before I have to give this back?”

“The chances of the drop being a fluke are a million to one,” began Strydom, then realized that these odds were greatly exaggerated.

“Ach, you’re impossible, Chris! You mustn’t let Trompie prey on your mind like this-and if it isn’t him, it’s that damned boy of his with the leg.”

“I’ve got to make certain, Anneline. I could be wasting everybody’s time.”

“Like mine, for instance?”

“Sorry, my poppie,” he soothed, getting up to hug her plump warmth. “I’ll leave this till tomorrow, when I can get at some old P.M. reports and study the incidence.”

“Tomorrow night the TV’s in Afrikaans,” she said, keeping hold of his hand, and they went automatically through to the kitchen for their coffee. “They’ve invited us again, so can you come over?”

“What’s on?”

“An Australian baritone singing translations from real Italian opera. I’m going.”

That, thought Strydom, was exactly what the old Minister of Posts and Telegraphs had warned about when describing television as the Devil’s instrument. Not once that week had they sat down together as man and wife and talked over his more interesting cases.

Zondi had hitched a lift home in a patrol van by the time Colonel Muller and the bank officials had released Kramer from their small private celebration. There was a note to this effect propped against the water carafe in their office.

Kramer looked at his watch and was disappointed to find that he could still focus: ten minutes to midnight. The whole object of drinking so much bad wine had been to take the edge off his sensibilities; in a deep and disturbing way, he was still feeling the tantalizing impact of that encounter. This was, of course, ridiculous.

He sat down at his desk and put a hand on the telephone. As it happened, he had a perfect right to ring Ferreira and ask him what the hell he’d meant by saying there were no women about-a statement which had been clearly contradicted. Arseholes to the fact it was the middle of the night: this was a murder investigation! And the girl could have been a casual visitor.

The telephone rang under his hand and startled him.

“Can I speak to Lieutenant Kramer?” asked someone who spoke slowly and distinctly. “Or perhaps leave a message for him?”

Kramer frowned; he knew that voice, a very recent addition to his collection. Then it clicked: he was being addressed by the chief telephonist at Brandspruit exchange, who had ears that stuck out at right angles until he slipped on his headset.

“Speaking,” he said, grabbing up a ballpoint. “You’ve got something for me?”

“We’ve been through every log going back until the date you gave us, Lieutenant.”

“Uh huh?”

“It would appear that the caller invariably asked for the same number-and it’s a Trekkersburg one, too, you may be glad to hear.”

“Shoot, man.”

“Trekkersburg 49590. The subscriber’s name is Miss Petronella Mulder, of 33 Palm Grove Mansions.”

“Never!”

“So you know the lady, I gather?”

“Ach, anybody can,” replied Kramer, “providing you fork out ten rand and don’t mind injections. Thanks a lot, hey? I must be going.”

And, after a short stop at the coffee machine, he went.

The small block of flats was up near the railway station and seemed a little like an extension of the marshaling yard. Puffing couples in drab coats were forever shunting their shabby trunks and packing cases along its mean balconies, either on their way in or on their way out, for few ever stayed there very long, despite the low rent. The snag was that the pock-necked little runt who owned the place gave nobody more than an hour’s grace to pay up, and this was a deadline many found impossible to meet in a lean week. It never worried Miss Mulder, however, whose delivery time was reputedly under seven squalid minutes.

Kramer raised his knuckles to the door of Number 33 with the expression of a man about to crack a rotten egg.

“Who-zit?” came the challenge from within.

“Vice Squad.”

The welcoming smile soured the instant she recognized him, but by then Kramer had his foot in the doorway and crushing down on her instep. While she blanched, gasped, and hopped about, he opened up properly and went in. The room was its usual shambles, and looked like a flying cosmetics display that’d hit a concrete mountain. The pity of it was that the smell didn’t match.

He kicked ajar the bathroom door. Nothing. No well-known city Rugby players in the kitchenette either.

“Alone at last,” said Kramer, turning to face her. “And how is my pretty tonight?”

Cleo de Leo, as she preferred her clientele to call her, was sitting on the edge of her tumbled bed holding her foot. The black wig was askew, one eyelash had come adrift, and her limbs, which had the shiny pneumatic look of a bus seat, were inelegantly positioned. The crumpled kimono gaped, exposing such gifts as she had to bestow: a sag of breasts as pendulous as two grapefruit in a pair of Christmas stockings, a navel like a novelty pencil sharpener, and a rusty pot-scourer. For lips, under a faint mustache, she had hemmorhoids.

“You stinking pig bastard!”

“Ach, no, be fair,” Kramer protested mildly, “because if you’re what you say you are, then I’m an amateur photographer.”

“You call that a lens?” she sneered, snuffling into a tissue.